Watch this before considering a NATO peacekeeping force in Libya: Moammar Gadhafi’s forces are leaving anti-personnel and anti-vehicular mines in eastern Libya after vacating rebel-held areas. So much for basic contemporary standards of warfare.
Human Rights Watch employees near Benghazi discovered five dozen mines left along the outskirts of the rebel capitol, and released the above video documenting the find on Wednesday. Once Gadhafi sought compensation from Britain and Italy for World War II-era mines. Now he’s placing mines near the road connecting Benghazi to Ajdabiya, “an area frequented by civilians in vehicles and on foot,” the rights group warns.
Congratulations, Col. Gadhafi: you’re now in the company of the Burmese junta, the only other regime known to lay landmines after the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty was signed in Ottawa. The U.S. isn’t a signatory, and some of its Tomahawk missiles carry cluster munitions, another weapons system that risks leaving unexploded ordnance behind for civilians to discover. But the U.S. doesn’t actively use those weapons against its own people.
And the Human Rights Watch local team discovered the landmines in the worst possible way: it drove over them. Luckily, only the team’s truck was harmed in the detonation.
Gadhafi’s forces have stockpiles of the mines throughout the country, Human Rights Watch notes. A depot full of them is in rebel hands in Benghazi, where rebel leaders vow they won’t use them. But Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s top military officer, indicated on Tuesday that the alliance is beginning to ponder a peacekeeping force for a post-Gadhafi Libya. If so, that hypothetical force may find Gadhafi left behind presents for it along the roads.
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